A disgraceful political smear and political hit job by Team Obama.

A former aide to President Bill Clinton, and current informal adviser to Sen. Hillary Clinton, expressed outrage and shock on Friday after a videotape from 1992 surfaced allegedly showing him describing Indianans as "white n---rs."

Mickey Kantor, who served as campaign chairman during Clinton's 1992 run for the White House and says he has offered help and advice to Sen. Clinton, insisted that the tape was a fraud and that he was exploring legal steps against the individual who posted it online.

"I've never used that word in my entire life, ever, under any circumstance, ever," an angry Kantor told The Huffington Post, citing his and his parent's work fighting for civil rights. "I have listened to and so have you. You can't tell what it is I'm saying in that second sentence, you can't decipher that."

Indeed, a review of the original copy of the 1993 film The War Room, from which the excerpt was taken (around the 4:40 mark) is virtually inaudible. The sound suggests, if anything, that instead of saying "How would you like to be a worthless white n****r?" Kantor says, "How would you like to be in the White House right now?"

The director of the film, moreover, says that Kantor never uttered those words. "He does not say that. He does not say that," D.A. Pennebaker told Ben Smith.

I just spoke to D.A. Pennebaker, the director of "The War Room," who said his film had been doctored to produce a widely-viewed YouTube clip.

In a clip from his film on the 1992 Clinton campaign, posted to YouTube today, Clinton advisor Mickey Kantor is -- according to subtitles -- seen referring to Indianans with an expletive and to his colleague George Stephanopolous with a racial slur.

"He does not say that. He does not say that," said Pennebaker, after viewing the clip.

He said the initial expletive referred to the anticipated reaction in the Bush White House to the fact that Ross Perot's polling numbers were holding strong.

"What he says is he’s surprised Perot’s numbers are holding," said Pennebaker in a brief phone interview. "He says they must be shi**ing in the White House."

The second expletive, he said, appeared to have been entirely fabricated, with new audio dubbed onto the original movie.

Pennebaker appeared surprised and amused by the video.

"A thousand people saw that film in theaters and didn't think" the second expletive had been used, he said. "It's very clearly understandable. It's not like it was in Bulgarian."

In an earlier version posted yesterday, the clip was circulating with a subtitle indicating -- Pennebaker says inaccurately -- that Kantor had insulted Indianans; the racial slur appears to have been added to the second version.

The audio in both versions isn't clearly audible; it's possible that the subtitles are incorrect, but that the audio hasn't been deliberately altered.

UPDATE: I spoke to the editor of the video who said that he enhanced, but didn't alter, the audio in the second portion of the video.

It's all a mess, though I must say when "The War Room" came out other folks interpreted Kantor to be impugning Indiana residents.

In The Washington Post's review of the film in 1993, critic Desson Howe referred to "a Mickey Kantor comment about the people of Indiana (when it looks as though Clinton's ahead in Dan Quayle's state)."

And a 1995 story in the Sydney Morning Herald said that "As for the good folk of Indiana, they are still recovering from the 1993 documentary War Room, which revealed the grim truth behind the Clinton election campaign. It showed Mr Kantor bursting in on election night to tell other campaign staffers that incredibly, Mr Clinton was doing well even in Republican Indiana. 'And those people are s---!' he declared breathlessly."